Remington 1903A3 Sporterized, is it worth reconfiguring to it's former glory?

Hi All,

A local GS has a Sporterized Remington 1903A3 on their shelves that's been there a while, that is peaking my interests.

It's a Remington, 1942-43 if I recall, no original sights, ugly sporter stock, cheap simmons scope and half a dozen holes drilled in the receiver for the scope mounts.

The bolt and trigger group and floor plate seems original to me with REM marks but I confess I know very little about these. The barrel measures 24 inches long and looks uncut to me. It has a sporter front sight that it pinned to the barrel I would assume with a key in the barrel like the original front sight was. The bore is in good shape with strong rifling.

They are asking $299 and I could probably talk them down $250-$275.

I guess my main concern is all the receiver holes. The action is smooth and the gun doesn't appear to be shot much.

Sorry, no pics, any thoughts or experience with these would be much appreciated. Drive me nuts seeing these old war horses sitting there while the plastic guns off the shelf. :crying:

Thanks! Southpaw

Filling holes can be done but usually there's signs it's been done. You can use fillers and peen them over and blue, hope you boil the salts out so it doesn't bleed perpetually...the other is wire feed weld and then clean it down. Same after, blue it and it will show the work. The cost of replacement parts to build it will likely be more than a rifle. This usually turns out to be a labor of insanity...

I am in the same boat, picked up a beautiful but sporterized 03A3 a few years back. I trying to return it to its former glory now. Biggest problem was that the rear dovetail was milled off for a Williams peep sight...grrr. Best of luck!

If the holes aren't in an area with writing, you can do a pretty clean job of covering them up. I filled a few holes along the top of a Colt 1911 slide with regular hardware store cap screws.
Once filed flush, smoothed out, and Oxpho-Blued, it's hard for even me to spot a couple of them!
Good thing about those holes, I got a hell of a deal on that Colt ;).

What are the the parts going to cost in relation to buying one off of an auction site?

Hi guys. Thanks for all the info. Yeah. As much as I want to adopt this old gal I'm afraid I just better leave her as is for some hunter to enjoy. Buy the time I put in the time, money and who knows what else I think I should just find one that's as close to original and spread the bread in that direction.

Funny, I have lot of milsurps from around the world, but none from my own country. ;-)

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Originally Posted by Southpaw_62

I just better leave her as is for some hunter to enjoy.

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Sage advice for others...